Model railway box car with sliding doors

ABSTRACT

A MODEL RAILWAY BOX CAR IS PROVIDED HAVING SLIDING DOORS, THE DOORS BEING GUIDED BY INTERIORLY LOCATED GUIDE MEANS TO TRAVEL BETWEEN NARROW, UPPER AND LOWER EXTERNAL, PARALLEL, SHOULDERED GUIDE RIBS, WHICH RIBS ARE NOT SUBSTANTIALLY WIDER THAN THE DOOR THICKNESS. EACH DOOR IS ADAPTED TO BE OPERATIVELY ASSEMBLED WITH THE ASSOCIATED SIDE WALL OF THE CAR WITHOUT RESORT TO ANY IMPLEMENT OR TOOL. THE INVENTION IS ESPECIALLY USEFUL IN VERY SMALL SCALE EQUIPMENT SUCH AS N-GAUGE, WHERE EVEN THE FINEST SCALE, EXTERNAL, CHANNELED GUIDES WOULD PREJECT OBJECTIONALLY, OFFSETTING THE REALISTIC EFFECT SOUGHT TO BE PRODUCED BY THE PROVISION OF SLIDING DOORS.

Nov 23, 1971 G. K. EDWARDS ETAL 3,621,610

MODEL RAILWAY BOX CAR WITII SLIDING DOORS 2 Sheets-Sheet 1 Filed April 5, 1970 .IZ'A l EA/T'ORS CLARENCE- K. EDWARDS MmeE/vc 0. gnu/mas y: flA i/M44) yfl 'E/zeir' aforng Nov. 23, 1971 Q. K. EDWARDS ETAL MODEL RAILWAY BOX CAR WITH SLIDING DOORS Filed April 5, 1970 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 Z/Vl EA/TOBS:

CL. AREA/CE K. EDWARDS LAWEE/VCE D- EDWARDS United States Patent ce 3,621,610 MODEL RAILWAY BOX CAR WITH SLIDING DOORS Clarence K. Edwards, 865 Morrison St., and Lawrence D. Edwards, 2816 Rosemont Ave., both of Medford, Oreg. 97501 Filed Apr. 3, 1970, Ser. No. 25,309 Int. (11. A6311 19/16 US. Cl. 46-218 Claims ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE A model railway box car is provided having sliding doors, the doors being guided by interiorly located guide means to travel between narrow, upper and lower external, parallel, shouldered guide ribs, which ribs are not substantially wider than the door thickness. Each door is adapted to be operatively assembled with the associated side wall of the car without resort to any implement or tool. The invention is especially useful in very small scale equipment such as N-gauge, where even the finest scale, external, channeled guides would project objectionably, offsetting the realistic effect sought to be produced by the provision of sliding doors.

This invention relates to model railroad equipment, and more particularly to small scale box cars having sliding doors. Since the invention is especially useful for very small scale equipment such as N-gauge which has a scale of ,4 as compared to standard gauge railroad equipment, it will be described with particular reference to N-gauge. It will be understood, of course, that the invention is also useful in larger gauges. In N-gauge, however, it is indispensable from a practical point of view.

At the present time, nearly all model railway box car bodies are composed chiefly or entirely of a suitable thermoplastic material and are die molded. Since N-gauge rails are separated from one another by only nine millimeters, a door or wall of proportionate thickness is very thin, indeed. If the closed door is made integral with the side, the thickness of the door and car side can be exaggerated in scale to any extent desired, because it is not going to be observable. Most N-gauge box cars are so made, and most of them will probably continue to be so made even when some box cars having sliding doors are included in the train. When that is so, however, the cars with doors that slide should look substantially like the cars having fixed doors, except that the slidable doors should be adjusted to occupy random open positions, as empty box car doors so often do in a real train. With doors standing open, the door thickness and the side wall thickness should be to scale or substantially so.

On real box cars there are upper and lower, external channeled guides for the doors, and these are simulated, but without channels, even on the model railway cars which have fixed, closed doors. To mold external, channeled guides for slidable doors to scale on N-gauge cars, is simply not feasible. The guides must be exaggerated in width and will form objectionably wide, unrealistic projections.

It is the primary object of the present invention to provide a small gauge model railway box car having sliding doors, which doors are equipped with concealed, internally located, guiding means, so that external projections above and below the door opening can be limited, or substantially limited to scale dimensions, but will still help to maintain the door in an erect attitude at any point along the sliding path.

time Patented Nov. 23, 1971 It is an important feature that the guiding means referred to form integrally molded parts of the car door, of the car floor and of the car body, so that the provision of these parts involves no extra labor expense.

Other objects and advantages will hereinafter appear.

In the drawing forming part of this specification,

FIG. 1 shows in side elevation a practical and advantageous box car embodying a presently preferred form of the invention, the view being on a considerably larger scale than N-gauge;

FIG. 2 is a fragmentary, perspective view of the in terior of the box car of FIG. 1, with parts broken away for clearness of illustration of certain details;

FIG. 3 is a fragmentary, sectional view of the same box car, the view being taken on the line 3-3 of FIG. 4, looking in the direction of the arrows;

FIG. 4 is a vertical, sectional view taken on the line 44 of FIG. 1, looking in the direction of the arrows;

FIG. 5 is a fragmentary bottom plan view of one side of the car;

FIG. 6 is a fragmentary, side elevational view of a box car embodying a second practical and advantageous form of the invention;

FIG. 7 is a sectional view taken upon the line 7-7 of FIG. 6, looking in the direction of the arrows; and

FIG. 8 is a sectional view taken on the line 88 of FIG. 7, looking in the direction of the arrows.

The car 10 of FIGS. 1 to 5 comprises a conventional floor member 12 which carries the usual trucks 14, wheels 16 and couplers 18, the details of which are not important for present purposes. The car body 20 includes a roof or ceiling portion 22, end Walls 24 and side walls 26. Each side Wall is provided with a door opening 28, bounded at its top and bottom by outwardly projecting, shouldered ribs 29 and 31 which extend across the door opening and for considerable distances beyond the door opening at one side thereof.

The ribs are designed to simulate channeled guides for sliding doors, but because it is desirable to hold down the widths of the ribs for securing realisms of appearance, the ribs are not formed to provide channels, but merely to provide narrow guide shoulders. The car bodies are formed in the usual way, as by the molding of a suitable thermoplastic material, but with some modifications which are required in connection with sliding doors 30, now to be described.

Each door 30 is made rectangular in form. It has one vertical edge 32 which travels across the door opening 28 and engages a fixed abutment 34 when the door is in closed position. The opposite vertical edge 36 travels back and forth over the solid portion of the side 26, always overlapping a portion of the car side, even in the fully closed condition of the door.

The door is integrally provided with upper and lower, inwardly projecting, guiding members 38 and 40, respectively. The lower member 40 is merely an inwardly offset downturned finger, which runs in a channel provided between a straight surface of the floor member 12 and an outwardly offset inner surface of a portion of the rib 31. The upper member 38 is inwardly offset from the upper margin of the door, like the finger 40, but it takes the form of an arm of uniform width which extends parallel to the door body from a point near the edge 32 of the door to a point well beyond the edge 36 of the door body. The roof member 22 has formed integral with it a downwardly projecting rib or block 44, spaced uniformly from the inner face of the car side 26, just far enough to provide a guide channel in which the arm 38 may be comfortably received.

With the arrangement described, the door is held snugly and dependably in place with freedom for sliding to any position desired, from the fully closed position to the fully open position. The door is maintained in its upright attitude at all times by engagement with the upper and lower ribs 29 and 31. It is not essential however, that the door have the full range of movement described, since the chief point is to have it stand partly open in any one of a variety of random positions.

The structure described has the merit that it can be conveniently and easily applied to the car body before the floor is applied to the car body, and that it will then be self-retaining. The door can best be applied by first placing the upper end of the edge 32 of the door substantially in its fully open position, but with the door tilted clockwise (as viewed in FIG. 1), far enough to permit the finger 40 to be passed inward through the door opening. The door is then rocked to level it, causing the finger 40 to be swung down into the lower slot and the arm 38 to be swung up into the upper slot. This involves a slight, temporary distortion of the door, itself. Instead of the assembling operations just described, the same relative placements and movements may be executed with the car body in inverted position. Since the car doors located opposite one another would generally be mirror images of one another, the above explanation of .assembly would not literally apply in all cases, but the principle would be the same and the exact procedure would be readily apparent to any one of ordinary skill in the light of the above explanation.

In FIGS. 6 to 8 disclosure is made of a modified car in which the guides 44 are omitted and the offset arm 38 is replaced by a generally equivalent arm 38a, a guide finger 50 and guide 52. Since the structure of FIGS. 6 t 8 is in most respect the same as that of FIGS. 1 to 5, corresponding reference characters with the subscript a have been applied to corresponding parts, and the description of these parts will not be repeated. The arm 38a is made integral with the door 30 as before, and it is joined to the door in substantially the same location, or it may be considerably lower down. The arm 38a, however, is somewhat more substantial and rugged than the arm 38, is not necessarily of uniform width or thickness, and spans the door-covered part of the door opening, being provided at its free end with a foot portion 46 which constantly bears resiliently against the inner face of the car side 26a.

If the arm 38a is placed high in the car as shown, the

finger 50 may be made an offshoot of the arm 38a. If

the arm 38a is located at a lower level, the finger 50, still integral with the door near the top thereof, will be molded as a part distinct from the arm 38a.

The door 30a can be assembled with the car body 20a in the manner already described for door 30 and car body 20.

The form of the invention shown in FIGS. 6 to 8 is particularly advantageous, however, when the sides, ends and roof of the car are made as separate parts and are thereafter assembled with one another, because this form does not depend upon utilization of the roof as part of the guiding and door-retaining structure. The door and the associated flat car side can therefore be assembled with one another before the major body parts are assembled with one another, a point of substantial convenience.

We have shown and described what we believe to be the best forms of embodiment of the invention.

We claim:

1. A model railway box car comprising, in combination,

(a) a car side having a door opening and external upper and lower shouldered door guiding ribs of scant width bounding the opening and extending beyond the opening at one side thereof for a distance comparable with the width of the door opening,

(b) an externally mounted sliding door for traversing past said door opening, having a thickness comparable to the thickness of a guiding rib, and including widely separated upper and lower, interiorly projecting guide members which are mounted exclusively on a common vertical margin of the door which is never required to clear the door opening, so that no mutilation of the car side is required for accommodating the guide members, one of said inwardly projecting guide members being a guide finger while the other member is an inwardly ofiset arm which extends in lateral spaced apart relation to the door completely across the inner surface of the door in generally parallel relation thereto, and

(c) interiorly located guiding means engageable by, and cooperative with, the respective guide members, for holding the door stably to the side of the car at or near diagonally opposite areas of the door,

the construction and arrangement being such that the door can be put into place in a tilted and slightly deformed condition, and may then be turned to an erect attitude and allowed to resume its natural fiat condition for operative self-retention on the car.

2. A small scale model railway box car as set forth in claim 1 in which the car body is broadened somewhat by the ribs and the inner surface of the lower rib is offset to provide a guiding slot constituting the guiding means for the finger between the rib and the car floor.

3. A small scale model railway box car as set forth in claim 1 in which the car body is broadened somewhat by the ribs and the inner surface of the lower rib is offset to provide a guiding slot constituting the guiding means for the finger between the rib and the car floor.

4. A small scale model railway box car as set forth in claim 3 in which the inwardly offset arm extends out of engagement with the inner surface of the car wall throughout the major portion of its length, but is shaped at its free end to provide a wall engaging portion, the wall serving as the guiding means cooperative with said arm.

5. A small scale model railway box car as set forth in claim 1 in which the inwardly offset arm is of substantially uniform width, and a car roof member is formed to provide, in cooperation with the inner face of the associated car side, a guide channel of uniform width in which the end of the arm travels, said channel constituting the guiding means cooperative with said arm.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 3,046,696 1962 Zion 462l8 403,165 1889 Wilkins 462l8 FOREIGN PATENTS 194,294 8 Germany 46222 4,258 1890 Great Britain 49409 LOUIS G. MANCENE, Primary Examiner A. HEINZ, Assistant Examiner US. Cl. X.R. 46223; 49404 

